Google and Bing have been accused of directing web traffic towards illegal music downloads.

A coalition of entertainment industry groups told the government that the major search engines "overwhelmingly" turn music fans onto pirated versions of copyrighted tracks, The Guardian reports.

In a private document obtained by the Open Rights Group (ORG) under the Freedom of Information Act, rights holders criticised Google and Bing for making it unnecessarily difficult for internet users to find legal copies of films and music.

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"Consumers rely on search engines to find and access entertainment content and they play a vital role in the UK digital economy," the rights holders state.

The nine-page report, submitted to culture minister Ed Vaizey last November, recommends that the government should introduce a voluntary body charged with the removal of rogue results from internet search engines.

The document was submitted on behalf of British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Premier League, the Publishers Association and film and TV producers' body Pact, who are calling for Google to review its policy on key search terms.

According to BPI Google searches dating back to September 2011, 16 of the first 20 results were "known legal sites". A search for bestselling books conducted in April last year allegedly showed that 41% of Google's first-page results yielded links to "non-legal" sites.

"The vast majority of consumers want search engines to direct them to legal sources of entertainment rather than the online black market," said BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor.

"As search engines roll out high-quality content services, like Google Music, we want to build a constructive partnership that supports a legal online economy. We hope that Google and other search engines will respond positively."

Earlier this month, Rupert Murdoch hit out at Google over online piracy, accusing the search engine giant of being a "leader" in profiting from pirated movies on the internet.